All I Want to Do is Believe
by fangirlgonewild
Summary: Dan/Blair: Blair leaves Dan waiting for her to look back.


It's a family brunch, so his father does the cooking, and the table is set with fewer utensils than entrees. Dan appreciates this, because he's been to enough meals where the opposite was true. He appreciates it more when Blair sits down diagonally from him and there is no floral tower to block his view.

They speak cordially, no more and no less than friends. Her ring catches the light and throws sparkles on the table. He passes her the rolls when she asks, their fingers brushing.

_Silk__sliding__against__skin_, he thinks.

_Thanks__for__the__rolls_, her head-tilt says back.

Dan shakes her hand good-bye and watches Blair float away, waiting for her to turn and catch his gaze. He cannot imagine what she'll do—he never knows if she's going to smirk or smile, it's part of her allure.

Blair keeps walking. She doesn't look back.

It really starts with the picture fading on the windowsill of Serena's room, the sunlight slowly baking the dark and light hair of the two girls into extremes.

The clothes are too large and far too fine for children to be playing with, but the clear treasures are the twin crystal tiaras, pinned on by inexperienced fingers.

Outwitting and outmaneuvering teen socialites is fine and dandy, but there is something about the parasite _royalty_ that curls up and sleeps in your blood forever.

Jenny returns to the loft precisely one day after Blair boards a private plane, and Dan marvels at the power of social destruction. The raccoon-eyed blonde wastes little time in clearing the living room of his stacks of books and movies, the litter of his daily life. She dusts the coffee table and leaves a copy of that day's paper.

He thumbs through the news, too lazy to bring the novel he was reading back to the place where he'd left it. Blair is on the front page of the society section, laughing at Louis rescuing her hat from the wind.

He crumples the image, wondering spitefully if it's the last photo-op she had to coordinate on her own behalf—or maybe it's the first she hadn't.

He flattens it out later, carefully smoothing out the lines of her face.

Blair picks up the phone smoothly, dialing him without hesitation. It might be the only phone number she can recite from memory, as she'd waited months into their friendship to actually add him to her contacts.

He picks up on the second ring, sounding far away.

"Do you have any idea what time it is?"

She doesn't, not really, but she imagines what he's doing at all hours of the day. _Right__now_, she thinks, _Humphrey__is__reading__something__pretentious__—__maybe__Flaubert?__—__while__standing__at__the__stove,__waiting__for__his__pancakes__to__cook._

"Do you ever talk to Vanessa?" she asks, trying to sound casual. Sometimes she gets the inkling feeling that the hippie artisté is lurking in the background of her imagined scenes, perched just out of her sight.

"Why?" Dan replies, suddenly extremely alert, "Have you heard from her?"

"I'm trying very hard to imagine what we could possibly have to discuss, Humphrey."

He sighs, mumbling something incoherent. Blair remembers his fumbling farewell, his eyes searching her face for a long minute. She'd never figured out if he'd found whatever it was he was looking for.

A loose end left untied and untucked.

Dan asks what film she watched on the plane, and Blair settles in, happy that he got to the point without her guiding him.

He calls her to tell her that a girl on the subway was wearing pink jeans. Is this a new thing, he wants to know.

She calls him to say that racing cars through the streets of a metropolitan city is more stupidity than sport, and she has fallen in love with Turkish coffee.

Blair takes tea in the garden a few times a week, forcing herself to accept that grass is a part of the ground here and is not just restricted to parks (and the occasional greenhouse). Louis putters around with a cricket bat and tries to convince her to join his game.

_Right now, Humphrey is walking to the Met, climbing the stairs I used to sit on in high school._

She declines, and he is interrupted moments later by a summons from his mother anyway. A council meeting, something official. Louis drops a kiss to her forehead and leaves her to her thoughts.

He worries that flowers and cake and lace will soon become topics of conversation, and that he will have to watch back episodes of TLC shows to remain relevant.

She secretly checks the NYU course catalogue and tries to divine what classes he will choose, concerned that his ever-changing worldview will leave her behind.

Dan meets Nate for a drink and to hear about the grand tour's progress. The dynamic duo, it seems, must occasionally cease their efforts to conquer the world's most exotic alcohols to do business.

Chuck joins them two hours in and rapidly surpasses them both. Nate chats up a girl at the next table over. Dan checks his phone.

She's so very _present_ in her _absence_.

He stays for another hour and a half, noticing as he boards a train that he's missed her call.

Blair can hear her fiancée and his cousin playing some ridiculous video game in the next room over.

"Boys," her future sister-in-law says, "they never outgrow those stupid machines."

They share a conspiratorial smile and return to their study of Vogue.

_Right now, he is driving that claustrophobic car out to visit his mother and singing along to the radio because no one can hear that he knows all the words to that new Rihanna song. _

Somewhere in the background, she's aware that Louis shuts off the game and leaves to attend a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Blair dreams in Brontë; she's soaked to the skin on a wild moor, caught between two estates. Louis and Chuck clash over her affections, and she screams at the pair that she _hates_ this book because she's never, ever believed Catherine truly loved _either_of them. She can't wake up and can't wake up, and when she cannot break free, she takes a breath and thinks, _Right__now,__Dan__is__…_

Dan is dreaming in Brontë too; he wakes in a cold sweat, haunted by _Reader,__I__married__him_.

They haven't spoken in ten days. He keeps getting her messages and calling back only to leave his own. Sometimes he'll speak as if she's there, answering him. Sometimes he'll read something and ask her to guess what it's from. One time he doesn't remember, he only sees the outgoing call on his phone log and prays that he wasn't so drunk that he said something stupid.

Prays that if he did, that it was romantic and witty and more honest than he could ever be otherwise.

Blair watches Louis over her breakfast, studying his face. He smiles at her, then turns to the stack of proposals to consider for a conference call this afternoon. His handsome features light up as he skims a page, and something nudges Blair from the back of her mind.

Recognition floods her thoughts, paralyzing her for a split second. Suddenly, she's sixteen again, watching Nate watch the way Serena's dress slips off her shoulders. She blinks, and she's nineteen, realizing with a sudden wave of nausea that Chuck is trading Jack's hands all over her for a building.

_Oh__God_, she gasps, internally.

"Blair? What is it?"

Maybe not internally.

The book comes out, and Dan still hasn't connected with her. She texted him _Congrats!__Just__got__my__copy.__Heading__to__France__to__spend__time__with__my__Dad.__Call__you__soon._

He suspects she hasn't read it, because surely he'd be able to feel her horror and anger from across the ocean. The ground under his feet would collapse, and the sidewalk would swallow him whole.

Serena shows up at a signing event to slap him, prompting a spike in sales.

Blair boards a commercial flight, attempting to fly under the radar in a first-class window seat. She slides open Dan's book, ashamed that she's just now cracking the spine. They've fallen out of calling one another, and she misses his voice, even if it's leaving garbled messages like _Remember__when__you__walked__me__into__the__world__of__scheming?__I__really__miss__you.__I__wish__I__'__d__paid__more__attention__to__how__it__'__s__done._

Three hours into her journey over the Atlantic, she turns a page and chokes a little on her glass of Chardonnay. She draws a few looks from the opposite aisle, but studiously ignores them in favor of one all-consuming, paralyzing thought.

She'd never honestly considered that _Right__now,__Dan__Humphrey__is__writing__a__story__about__how__he__loves__me_.

Dan takes to hiding at the loft, vacillating between reading on his bed and reading on the couch. Jenny takes off to places unknown, and he starts leaving his books everywhere again. He turns off his phone, uninterested in the disappointment/anger of his muses and the updates/requests of his agent.

The last call Dan took was to hear that someone wanted to option the book for a screenplay. In a little over two years, he can attend a premiere and watch his fictional self lose all his fictional friends!

He can imagine nothing more depressing. He says, _Fine,__whatever_, and hangs up on the world.

Blair knocks on his door for a solid three minutes before hunting down his spare key and letting herself in. She steps into the loft as he exits his bedroom, and for a second no one says anything.

"I thought you were in France," he says, to break the silence.

"I read your book on the flight back," she replies, "it's very…well-punctuated."

They order Thai and sit on opposite ends of the couch.

Blair confesses that she's not getting married. She hasn't been getting married for a month. Dan admits that he hasn't connected with the world at large in at least that long. Blair's been afraid to see a paper.

They argue over what kind of comedy their lives have become: Shakespearean or Hollywood romantic.

She checks her watch and announces that Dorota expected her home hours ago. He watches her walk to the door.

Blair looks back over her shoulder to meet his eyes. Dan waits to see if she'll smirk or smile.


End file.
